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Friday, 4 November 2016

Closing NATO’s Deterrence Gaps

“Russia is using the whole range of of state
organs and powers to push its foreign policy in increasingly aggressive ways”.

MI5
Director-General Andrew Parker. 1 November, 2016

Alphen,
Netherlands. 3 November. Russia is exploiting NATO’s many deterrence gaps
because the Alliance no longer understands deterrence. Back in 1959 Bernard
Brodie defined deterrence as a strategy designed to dissuade an adversary of an
action not yet taken. Then deterrence was seen as what Herman Kahn infamously called
the Homicide Pact Machine. However,
contemporary deterrence requires far more than mutually assured nuclear
destruction. Deterrence today is a complex mix of political will, conventional
armed forces, nuclear forces, societal resiliency, new technology, and even psychological
robustness. Moscow understands that and has embarked on a counter-deterrence
influence strategy so that relatively weaker Russia can systematically undermine
inherently far stronger NATO.

Moscow’s strategy operates
at several levels. Russia is seeking to weaken NATO conventional military
deterrence by establishing local, temporary military superiority and implying
the threat of a long war that would force the Alliance to trade space for time.
Moscow’s aim is to establish a virtual buffer zone of influence, not to trigger
a war with the Alliance as a whole. Russia would either lose such a war, or trigger
a nuclear conflict which Moscow understands would be a disaster for all. However,
that does not preclude Moscow from embarking on a ‘limited’ Baltic land grab if
it deemed the circumstances to be sufficiently propitious. Around the Baltic
States Russia now enjoys local military superiority. And, whilst NATO conventional forces look
strong on paper, many of them are either not equipped, ill-equipped, or simply
unable to move quickly in support a major crisis in NATO’s east.

However, it is
Alliance nuclear deterrence where Russian strategists are employing their
considerable intellectual, strategic, and indeed psychological skills. By
introducing illegal short and medium-range nuclear weapons back into Europe, and
by suggesting they might have a warfighting role, Moscow is trying to break the
continuity link between NATO’s conventional and nuclear deterrents. Moscow is also
only too happy to leave an implied threat of nuclear war hanging toxically in
the minds of its fellow Europeans.

The strategy is
working. Apart from a limited French mid-range airborne nuclear capability, and
some ancient American assets based in Germany, there is no credible political link
between NATO’s conventional and nuclear forces. If ‘enhanced forward presence’,
i.e. the conventional deterrent failed the US, Britain and France would be
faced with the prospect of resorting to the use of their strategic nuclear
forces. Such forces could in theory play a ‘sub-strategic’ role given that most
of them can carry a range of warheads with different levels of destructive kilo-tonnage
and mega-tonnage. However, these systems are submarine-based and in a sense
self-deter as Moscow have to assume that if such a missile appeared on its
radars it would herald a country-busting strategic exchange. Given that reality
the idea that such weapons could deter a ‘limited’ war in Eastern Europe let
alone be used is not only politically ‘incredible’ (in the real meaning of the
word), it is unthinkable.

Deterrence is not
simply about weapons – far from it. Russia is employing a range of irregular
methods to undermine Alliance deterrence. This includes hybrid warfare, a range
of soft power tactics, through the use of social media to sow disinformation,
and direct efforts to exploit the political divisions in already divided
European societies. Strategic
miscommunication and disinformation is spread via a ‘hybrid truth’ strategy using
television networks such as RT and Sputnik that are little more than instruments
of Russian propaganda. Moscow has also bought some misguided academics and
commentators in Europe to help ‘multiply the message’.

Russia’s
use of cyber-warfare is proving particularly adept. Andrew Parker’s statement
coincided with this week’s announcement by the British Government that it will
spend some £2bn/$2.4bn on a new cyber-warfare capability that would, in the
words of Chancellor Philip Hammond, enable Britain to “strike back” against attackers.
Russia already has a major offensive cyber capability focussed on its mammoth Ministry
of State Security, and is about to invest another $250m.

Why
is Russia for the moment succeeding? The strongest/weakest pillar of deterrence
is politics. Political deterrence worked during the Cold War because Moscow
believed credible the NATO Article 5 premise that an attack on one Alliance
member would be regarded as an attack on all. Today, the automaticity of NATO collective
defence is not so clear. Last week I was in Italy. Many senior Italians simply
dismiss the Russian ‘threat’ as the hysterical ramblings of a few, small Baltic
States. It is a point of view held elsewhere in Europe, most notably in France.
Critically, NATO’s eastern, southern, and western members are profoundly
divided over where to make the Main Effort. Worse, the two traditional bastions
of the Alliance are either distracted, as in the case of the US, or
politically-broken, as in the case of the UK. Brexit is proving to be precisely
the strategic disaster I predicted, and which forced me to abandon any support
for it.

So, what to do? At
the July NATO Warsaw Summit the Alliance agreed that, “NATO’s capacity to deter
and defend is supported by an appropriate mix of capabilities. Nuclear
conventional and missile defence capabilities complement each other. NATO also
maintains the freedom of action and flexibility to respond to the full spectrum
of challenges with an appropriate and tailored approach, at the minimum level
of force”.

In
such political circumstances NATO’s room for deterrent manoeuvre is limited.
However, if the Alliance is to plug its deterrence gaps there are some things
the alliance, or at least its more powerful members could do, if one assumes
that a weak Russia does not actually seek all-out war. First, contest the
cyber-battlespace. Do not leave the field to the Russians to exploit cyberspace
at will. Second, contest the hybrid information-space. Deconstruct Russian propaganda
and actively promote a message of strength and friendship to the Russian people.
Third, mean what we say. Alliance members must actually fulfil the commitments
they make at NATO summits. Fourth, forge
a new Resiliency Pact between NATO and the EU to render European society more robust
in preventing Moscow’s efforts to divide and distract. Above all,
NATO members must prevent the strength/weakness balance of power to reach a
point anywhere in the Alliance where Russia’s own internal self-contradictions might
lead a Kremlin in crisis to chance a nationalist-adventurist gamble.

If NATO is to
fulfil its mission the Alliance must not only fill the deterrence gaps, it must
think anew about just what deterrence actually means and demands in the
twenty-first century. Then, just then, we might convince President Putin to
avoid actions not yet taken, and which may lead who knows where...

About Me

Julian Lindley-French is Senior Fellow of the Institute of Statecraft, Director of Europa Analytica & Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow, National Defense University, Washington DC. An internationally-recognised strategic analyst, advisor and author he was formerly Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy at the Netherlands Defence Academy,and Special Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Leiden. He is a Fellow of Respublica in London, and a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington.
Latest books: The Oxford Handbook on War 2014 (Paperback) (2014; 709 pages). (Oxford: Oxford University Press) & "Little Britain? Twenty-First Strategy for a Middling European Power". (www.amazon.com)
The Friendly-Clinch Health Warning: The views contained herein are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any institution.